Post #1106289

Personally, I think a football player sitting during the anthem is ineffectual. It’s less effective even than temporarily adding an overlay to your Facebook avatar after a crisis.

If the people who sit want to help the cause for which they protest, they should do so in a way that matters. You can’t show solidarity to the BLM community by sitting unless the camera notices you doing it and the media jumps up and down accordingly. So I think the people who sit should be ignored, because it deflates their method of protest entirely.

It’s similar to how Trump wouldn’t have won the primary had he not been given all the media attention. Just ignore them, and their opinion becomes moot.

A player sitting during the anthem is so ineffectual you think the media should ignore it (instead of jumping up and down accordingly) - so it will deflate their method of protest entirely?

Erm… what?

Well, I’ve been trying to stay out of this one so far, but I think I can translate. I think he’s saying it’s ineffectual in that it doesn’t communicate the message you’re trying to send, not that it doesn’t successfully grab media attention. i.e. the media ruckus becomes about sitting and flags and whatnot, and not about your actual grievances, therefore it’s ineffectual.

I haven’t actually formed an opinion on the concept of media grabbing yet. It does seem to be central to the “Stay Woke” thesis – that unless your reminders that racism and brutality exists are adequately loud and outrageous, your protests will eventually turn into background noise and the media (and therefore the majority) will tune them out, fall back into a slumber, and think everything must be fine now. BLM has embraced this and while they’ve clearly gotten some backlash, the media’s focus on police racism and brutality has definitely been longer and more critical recently than during any recent prior protest movement, and I’d say police racism and brutality is actually much less prevalent today than in the years past when it was barely covered at all. So did BLM succeed with confrontational protest tactics? Or is it the fact that almost every citizen carries around a video camera these days and stuff can’t be explained away as easily as it used to? Or a combination. I really don’t know.

The thing I can’t stand about BLM is how the facts don’t seem to matter. They hear about a white cop shooting a black person, and automatically assume it must be racism and the shooting must be unjustified. No looking at the facts, no reasonable doubt. The cop is guilty until proven innocent in their eyes.

There’s seemingly a fair few assumptions from yourself there (unless you have facts for these claims?).

Just what I see on the news. I see them protesting police shootings all the time and not giving a damn about the evidence. Just take a look at Ferguson. The witnesses conflict with each other and the physical evidence at the scene is inconclusive, yet they still want to crucify Darren Wilson because they are so sure he shot Micheal Brown while he had his hands in the air surrendering.

So a few honest questions as someone who is new to this - in a bid to establish some facts…

Do the people in the BLM think and speak with one voice?

I don’t think they are fully unified under one voice, but there is a loose group.

Are BLM often factually incorrect (if thinking and speaking with one voice)?

not exactly. But I do believe many join these protests without having a firm understands of the facts of the cases they are protesting.

Would it not hurt their own campaign for change if they did not look at the facts (or facts known) beforehand?

it would, but they don’t seem too worried about that.

and then later were proved incorrect, and then repeatedly so - as to do so would surely take away the credibility of the organisation if it were continually proven incorrect, no?

the media doesn’t seem to care too much about proving them incorrect. The media seems to care more about sensationalizing these cases.

Does the BLM have a policy of automatically assuming ‘the cop is guilty until proven innocent’ - and if so where is this policy?

I think they have policy of using any shooting they can use to forward their agenda.

All this is not to say that there isn’t a problem of police brutality and with the how they interact with black people. There well might be. But none of these problems excuse presuming any cop guilty until proven innocent.